Chapter 11 - The Devil's Arrival
The hospital lobby was quiet at 2:00 AM.
I grabbed a paper cup of black coffee from the vending lounge on the first floor and leaned against the glass window, looking out into the empty courtyard. The rain had cleared, leaving the night sky crisp and littered with cold stars.
Everything was over. Richard was behind bars without bail. Sophia was healing. We had our lives back.
My phone chimed in my pocket.
It was a text from Detective Vance.
I unlocked the screen, expecting an update on Castiglione’s arraignment hearing.
Instead, the message read:
*GARRETT. GET TO SOPHIA'S ROOM NOW. RICHARD DIDN'T WORK FOR CASTIGLIONE. CASTIGLIONE WORKED FOR SOMEONE ELSE. WE JUST OPENED THE SAFE DEPOSIT BOX.*
My heart plummeted into my stomach.
Before I could type a reply, my screen flashed with an incoming image from Vance.
It was a photograph of an old military dossier stamped with top-secret classification seals from my second deployment in Kandahar. Attached to the file was a recent bank ledger, showing millions of dollars funneled through foreign shell companies.
And written at the top of the ledger was a single name.
Not Richard.
Not Castiglione.
*Colonel Thomas Sterling.*
My former commanding officer. The man who had signed my early deployment release papers to send me home.
Suddenly, every light on the ground floor shut off.
A deafening clatter echoed through the hospital as the emergency backup generators sputtered, clicked, and then died completely. Total, suffocating darkness engulfed the building.
The fire sirens began to scream—a shrill, rhythmic wail echoing through the empty corridors.
*Sophia.*
I dropped the coffee cup, pulled my weapon from my jacket, and sprinted toward the stairwell doors, taking four steps at a time as I raced upward through the pitch blackness toward the eighth floor.
My lungs burned. My boots slammed against the concrete.
When I kicked through the heavy fire doors onto the eighth floor, the smell hit me immediately.
Not antiseptic.
Not medicine.
The acrid, biting stench of industrial bleach.
The two police officers assigned to guard Sophia’s room were lying face down in the hallway, pools of dark blood spreading across the floor beneath their heads.
The door to Sophia’s room was wide open.
I broke into a dead sprint, raising my pistol as I cleared the threshold.
"Sophia!"
The room was empty.
The sheets were torn from the bed, trailing across the floor. The IV bags were sliced open, fluid dripping rhythmically onto the tiles.
On the large glass window looking out over the city skyline, written in fresh, crimson blood, was a single message:
*DEBTS NEVER DIE, CAPTAIN.*
May you like
And beside the window, tied to the radiator by a piece of green paracord, Sophia’s heart monitor continued to beep in the dark—its wires clipped, its screen blinking with a red countdown timer that read:
*00:04:59... 00:04:58... 00:04:57...*
